Paleo diet suggests you get back to your caveman roots

View full sizeChristine Baker, The Patriot-NewsErin Vroman of Camp Hill started a paleo diet which consists of lean meats, seafood, vegetables, fruits, and nuts about 6 months ago. Vroman says she has much more energy and has lost about 20 pounds since changing her way of eating. Her children and husband have a regular diet, but get the benefits of the healthy meals that Vroman prepares for them. Erin listens to her daughter India during a breakfast of organic eggs, bacon and strawberries.

What did you have for breakfast today?

Unless your answer is fruit or bacon and eggs, chances are that you imbibed something grain-based that humans weren’t really configured to eat.

If you go by the standards of our Paleolithic ancestors, that is.

Welcome to Paleo (pronounced: Pay-lee-O) living. Beware, many of the rules you thought you knew about healthy eating are about to change forever.

The phrase is a nod to the wisdom of our Stone Age ancestors from 2.5 million years ago, who subsisted on a hunter-gatherer diet of plants and meat, with very little of the complex carbohydrates that humans today have come to believe are essential for energy.

Those who adopt the Paleo perspective eschew all modern processed foods — yes, even grains such as wheat, barley and quinoa — throw out the food pyramid and, as a general rule, stick to foods that were only available to Paleolithic man.

That means fruit and vegetables, roots and tubers, nuts, any hormone-free — preferably grass-fed — meat you can get your hands on, and all the seafood you can eat.

“If it doesn’t grow in nature, I don’t eat it,” said Camp Hill resident Erin Vroman, who adopted the Paleo lifestyle in January. “Your food pyramid is now just a plate: plant half, meat half and water.”

“The whole premise is that our bodies were created for a specific purpose. Our genome hasn’t changed in the last five million years, but we’ve created a lot of the food we eat today.”

Paleo converts point to the Industrial Revolution as the movement that threw the human digestive system off track.

“In the last 10,000 years we created modern agriculture and changed how we eat. We introduced a lot of grains and wheat and some of the new vegetables like corn and potatoes,” Vroman said. “And in the last several decades we’ve created this whole mess of a situation with refined sugar and processed things, and made-up food like cheese curls.”

Vroman, 30, first came across the Paleo diet about a year and a half ago when a friend directed her to robbwolf.com, the website of Paleolithic nutrition expert Robb Wolf, author of The Paleo Solution.

At the time, Vroman was working out intensely in a valiant effort to lose the remnants of weight she’d gained during her second pregnancy.

“I was stuck at this weight I just hated. So I worked out and ate well and watched what I ate and ate whole grains. But nothing was budging from this number [on the scale] or my size,” Vroman said.

View full sizeChristine Baker, The Patriot-NewsErin with her husband Chris, and daughters Monroe, 3, left, and India, 4, right, at their home in Camp Hill.

The Paleo lifestyle intrigued her and after a year of research, she dove into it.

She cut starch and grains out of her diet and started living out of her refrigerator. Results showed almost immediately. Her skin seemed to feel more even and moisturized instead of dry or oily.

Vroman lost 10 pounds in a month and in the absence of all sugars, including ones present in food such as granola or grain, “the belly fat just sloughed off me,” she said.

But it’s not just about losing weight.

The largest benefit of going Paleo is that “it restores normal function to your gut and digestive system,” said Diane Sanfilippo, a holistic nutritionist who runs a Paleo nutrition blog. “It’s what most people have trouble with but they don’t even know because nobody talks about it. Bloating and diarrhea are not normal and we shouldn’t be experiencing that at all.”

Adopting the Paleo perspective is like hitting a reset button on your digestive system.

“You’re made to eat this way and your body is going to conform to what it was naturally meant to be like,” said Vroman, who was so impressed by the results that she started feeding her kids the same way.

Today, India, 4, and Monroe, 3, might well be the only preschool kids in America who actually enjoy salads and don’t clamor for things like chicken fingers and mac and cheese.

They still get fries and bread when dad, Chris, is in charge of dinner because he hasn’t quite adopted the Paleo lifestyle. But when mom makes food, the Vroman kids eat lots of veggies, apples, peanut butter and cooked chicken.

Chicken is actually Vroman’s go-to snack. She’s gotten in the habit of roasting a whole chicken a few times a month, and then picking at it throughout the day. She also cooks everything in real butter — a practice that would make most health fanatics cringe.

But fat is not evil, says Sanfilippo, who operates on the mantra “fat will not make you fat” and constantly has to reassure new clients that the fat present in meat, avocados, olive oil and nuts is natural and more essential to the human diet than the carbohydrates present in processed foods such as whole grains.

“In a zoo, you feed a wild cat raw meat, right? But why do people bring cats home and feed them Kibble? It’s not the right diet. And that’s what we do to ourselves when we go from eating whole, fresh natural food and have to process them,” Sanfilippo said. “Nobody picks up a wheat plant and eats it.”

ERIN’S TIPS

She goes by an 80/20 Paleo diet, meaning she allows herself to deviate by as much as 20 percent. Salad dressings don’t count either.

Local restaurants Mangia Qui and Café Fresca are very Paleo-friendly

SAY “YES” TO:

Meat. All those myths you’ve heard about how red meat has too much saturated fat to be good for the body? It’s just myth. Naturally-oriented medical doctor Dr. John Briffa says half the fat in most meat is good fat. So go ahead and eat venison, beef, lamb, pork, chicken, duck, and turkey. It’s good for you. Just try to get the hormone-free kind.

Seafood. Fish, shrimp, crab, oysters. It’s all natural and good for you. But err on the side of wild-caught. A Paleo diet consists of 10-30 percent protein.

Vegetables. Plentiful and colorful are your buzzwords. Now have at it.

Fruit. Fruit contains more natural sugar than vegetables, but have necessary nutrients. Berries and melon are best.

Roots. Paleo followers get their carbohydrates from things such as yam, taro and sweet potato.

Eggs. High in nutrients, these are your friend.

Water. lots of it. A cup of coffee a day is OK too.

Chocolate. the darkest chocolate with the highest cacao you can find.

SAY “NO” TO:

Anything packaged. This includes crackers, chips and Twinkies.

Sugar. This includes Equal and all its substitutes and stevia. Agave and honey are good alternatives though.

Sauces. Throw out the BBQ and teriyaki sauce and stock up on herbs and spices. Sea salt and black pepper should be pantry staples.

Starch. Potatoes, beans and corn evolved in the modern era, and pasta, wheat, rice, quinoa and barley all need to be broken down and processed before consumption.

Most dairy. this includes all cheese and yogurt. None of this was available to Paleolithic man.

Alcohol. Beer is processed. Red wine, however, is generally considered OK.

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